Ace Backwords: Master criminal

‎More sordid tales from my mis-spent youth: When I was 16-years-old I got busted trying to shoplift this Paul McCartney album. “Red Rose Speedway.” It was in this big mall, this department store, in Paramus, New Jersey.

I guess I really must have wanted that album. To risk shoplifting it. I didn’t have the dough to buy it.

An undercover security guard immediately caught me trying to slip the album under my jacket. Busted. He escorted me to this backstage area to await my fate as a shoplifting criminal.

“How did you know I was stealing the album?” I asked the undercover security guard.

“Are you kidding?” he said. “I was watching you for ten minutes. You were doing this.” He did an exaggerated pantomime of a guy looking back and forth, wide-eyed, trying not to get caught doing something illegal. I guess I was pretty obvious. I thought I was being slick.

They called my mother over the mall PA. And she came backstage to retrieve me. “We caught your son shoplifting this Paul McCartney album.” So that was embarrassing.

I guess it would have been cooler if I had tried to shoplift a Rolling Stones album or something. But Paul McCartney?